This invention is an improvement over such batching equipment as set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,819 issued to Charles M. Blackburn and John L. Ditman on Nov. 9, 1971 for Electronic Counting Apparatus. That entire patent is incorporated herein as a part of the disclosure for the purpose of background, and to eliminate attention to details that relate to peripheral and system equipment in a way obscuring the nature and spirit of this invention. The known prior art is represented by this patent and its cited references.
Some of the problems unresolved in prior art batch counters in general include (1) limitations of operating speed, (2) ineffective precision and accuracy of the count, (3) the accumulation, storage and handling of rejected pieces, and (4) non-continuous flow of pieces that reduces batching speeds.
The most difficult problem to resolve includes a combination of these deficiencies, namely the attainment of the highest reliable operating speed with the lowest maintenance cost. Thus, high speed attained when batch counts are not precise is not acceptable, nor is high speed attained at the expense of complex auxiliary equipment and/or auxiliary operations requiring interspersed manual attention.
Most of the prior art batching speed limitations resided in heavy mechanical equipment with considerable inertia necessitated to handle many pieces at a time or complex motion patterns such as involved in processing the batches for bagging, etc. Thus, the prior art systems have been limited to average processing speeds of pieces being counted far less than the speed at which the pieces may be presented reliably for counting or individual handling.